Germany, 1918. The dirt roads had to have been muddied by snow, and the surrounding devastation? Unimaginable.
We don’t know what was going through Letitia Curtis’ mind as she and a fellow Red Cross volunteer crossed the German border in a truck filled with precious supplies—clothes and food—for Allied prisoners from the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Russia following Germany’s surrender.
But we do know that Curtis—a former stenographer at Pacific Gas & Electric Company—and her partner were the first American women to enter Germany since World War I had begun four years earlier.
As they traveled down the congested roads in their truck draped with an American flag, retreating artillery convoys stopped to let them pass and German soldiers with red flags on their rifles, a sign of surrender, “cheered vociferously … and hurrahed for the ‘three republics—America, France and Germany,’” according to a Pacific Service Magazine story.
According to that report, Curtis was determined to help as soon as the United States entered the war in 1917, leaving her job at PG&E to volunteer for foreign service with the Red Cross.
Before she resigned, her teammates honored her:
“We salute you, the first woman of ‘Pacific Service’ to volunteer for foreign service.
“We laud your patriotism in breaking the warm ties of home and friends to answer the call of duty overseas with its cold certainty of labor, trials and sacrifice.
“We believe the unusual experience and the broad opportunity for personal development of character will far more than repay you for the many hardships you will have to endure, but the feeling of duty well done will be your greatest reward.
“We wish you Godspeed; our good thoughts go with you.”
“Letitia Curtis is an example of absolute bravery and displayed the will-do/can-do attitude of so many women who were compelled to make an impact on the war effort,” said Grace Eng, the PG&E archivist who unearthed Curtis’ story. “Ms. Curtis is an inspiration, especially when I think about how women were not even able to vote at that time or were limited to what some may call traditional roles and work.”